Darwinism

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. A theory of biological evolution developed by Charles Darwin and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce. Also called Darwinian theory.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. Various concepts of development or evolution popularised by Charles Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859.

n. The principles of natural selection set out in Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859), more strictly defined by August Weismann and developed by other authors into a central part of the modern evolutionary synthesis.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. The theory or doctrines put forth by Darwin. See above.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

n. The body of biological doctrine propounded and defended by the English naturalist Charles (Charles Robert) Darwin (1809-1882), especially in his works “The Origin of Species” (1859) and “The Descent of Man” (1871), respecting the origin of species.

You'll never erase the word Darwinism from the lexicon, but people who know the story of Darwin's and Wallace's near-simultaneous inspirations — and there are an increasing number of those people now — accept that the ideas of survival of the fittest and the origin of species were the work of two people, not one.

Worse still, DR Witt’s straightforward answer does little to reassure me of his probity: In the very same venue where I asked that question, DR Witt had used the term Darwinism to clearly refer to a school of thought in philosophy, as for example when he said “Thus, in practice the materialist/Darwinists’ fourth … “ and this is just one of many such statements threatening the consistency of his self professed definition.